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An anonymous reader writes "Go Daddy has relented in the face of public pressure and will no longer support SOPA. 'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation—but we can clearly do better,' Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said."
Go Daddy was put under a tremendous amount of pressure from around the internet; a boycott had been organized for Dec. 29th, and several major sites threatened to pull their domains from Go Daddy, including Stack Overflow and I Can Has Cheezburger. The U.S. House Judiciary committee posted a list of companies who support SOPA (PDF).

I've already transferred all of my domains and their mea culpa is meaningless. The damage was already done when they supported it. They didn't change their mind. You and I both know they still support SOPA and will continue to do so. The only difference between today and yesterday is that, today, they don't have a page on their website saying they support it. This is lie your cheating wife saying that her affair with some dude behind your back is over - now that she's been caught - while the truth is she's just telling you it's over and she's actually continuing to cheat behind your back.

I should have left GoDaddy ages ago. I just couldn't find an affordable alternative that wasn't sketchy and didn't really want to deal with the trouble of the process. This just finally put me over the edge.

If one starts with that premise, then it's impossible to arrive at any rational conclusion. Allow me to rephrase, so that one and all might start over, and possibly arrive at some meaningful conclusion.

'Fighting online piracy is futile." Notice the full stop, no need for a comma, or any gibberish phrases to be tacked on.

I'd never heard of either of the previous issues. Their commercials were scummy, but they started them after I'd already started registering domains with them, and it was convenient to keep all my domains in one place, and bad commercials aren't enough to make me leave a product that's working for me.

However, this news put transferring my domains as part of my to-do list for the weekend. This reversal doesn't change that: It says they can listen, but not that they can think. Otherwise wouldn't have taken the position they did in the first place.

Well, I'm sure GoDaddy is reading this thread, so I just wanted to chime in: my employer is moving all of our ten trillion domains off of GoDaddy. And, we're suing GoDaddy for breach of contract; our contract contained explicit terms that the hosting company would not participate in the political process.

Why only cancel the auto-renew on one? It's worth pointing out (in case this is your reason) that you won't lose your current registration time by transferring to a new registrar. Usually transferring to the new registrar involves paying for a 1 year renewal but this 1 year will be added on to your existing registration, not replacing it. For instance I had domains with Godaddy that expired in 2012 and 2013, now I've transferred to internet.bs they expire in 2013 and 2014 respectively.

Yeah, turns out that the vast majority of people that maintain websites are against SOPA. Which is totally obvious considering the demographic. One really wonders what the fuck GoDaddy thought was gonna happen here. This stupid SOPA shit is so totally stacked against anyone that isn't a Huge Media Conglomerate or MAFIAA fuck that they should have expected this response.

Besides, everyone knows they're not sincere with this reversal. They just don't want to lose their customer base. Probably should have thought before they backed legislation that directly harms their customer base, though...

Yeah, I know, but there are far more personal websites out there than Cocacola.com's, if you get my meaning.

Like you said, the odds of someone using their service being in support of SOPA are slim to none. The Cocacola.com's aren't using GoDaddy. They basically gave 99% of their customer base the finger by supporting this stupid shit. What a bunch of idiots...

This is not a 180 degree turn. It is a grudging submission to their customers on one issue. A 180 degree turn would be for them to oppose SOPA and to challenge the notion that imposing traditional copyright onto this new and incompatible medium is the only possible way to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

I want to see them actively lobbying against it now, instead of just taking back what they said. Then maybe I'll have some respect for them. I still plan on transferring away from them as soon as I can.

Unless of course it gets [redgreenandblue.org] you [gather.com] arrested [dailykos.com] instead. GoDaddy would probably be thrilled if they could have people arrested for transferring domains to another registrar if too many people try to do so at once -- and don't be surprised if some future version of DMCA/SOPA/FUBAR actually includes such a provision, or at least language which can be twisted that way. Face it, folks, they're not going to quit pushing.

Yup - you still can. We'll see if non-geeks care, or even remember, this issue come November. The thing about democracy: is the concerns of the average guy are all that voting will affect. I think SOPA might be defeated on the basis that congresscritters realize that the average guy is starting to notice this one - after all, they're messing with funny cat pictures, and I don't think that will fly.

Same here. I've always disliked GoDaddy and their awful advertising and upsells. I switched to gandi.net today. Their removal of public support for SOPA is encouraging, and I'd like to think my emails to them contributed to the decision, but I'm still not going back.

Not really. I'd rather see them do the right thing in the first place. Instead of them being ass hats and only after they've pissed on enough customers make a superficial about face. Just so they can survive just long enough for most people to forget what they did and preform another ass hat move.

And barring that, I'd like to see them do the right thing now... which, given the visibility they have with congress, is NOT to quietly sit in the back row and remove their blatant pro-SOPA propaganda... it's to go in and tell congress "We're losing all our business just on the THREAT of SOPA passing. I think we may want to kill this thing and come up with something that doesn't negatively affect everyone who uses web sites." Then to start lobbying in that direction, and start speaking out against the ways SOPA is harmful.

This isn't how I expect GoDaddy to respond, but this is the only way they'd gain my respect.

What most smart, knowledgeable people want to see this corporate entity do is crash and burn, and for its executives to be out begging on the street. The former probably won't happen, of course, and the latter definitely won't happen, but we can dream.

This is really a case of character revelation. There's no reversing course when it is revealed you have bad character. Any claim of reversal is now tainted by the knowledge of your bad character, and will be for many years, until contrary actions convince the public of your change. So if GoDaddy wants this business back, they need not only state a reversal of course, they need to be seen actively lobbying and spending significant money fighting SOPA and similar laws. For years.

ICANN has Cheeseburger indeed... ICANN will disintegrate if SOPA goes through. It'll be replaced by something with minimal US presence, which pretty much all ISPs and ICPs will use, unless legislated not to.

When Congress goes as far as telling Google they can't use their own DNS root, things will begin to get REALLY interesting.

They're losing revenue through actual plagiarism (www.overratedchemistrycrap.ru or somesuch). You know, real product piracy. In other words, the topic onto which the MAFIAA scumbags tagged their attempt to control the internet.

And the most of the rest appear to be either unions (police and labor) and the content owners themselves like MPAA, ABC, CBS, NFL, and Disney (i.e. the usual suspects). GoDaddy seemed to be the only Internet based company on that list. I'm not sure I understand the motivation for all of the major drug and cosmetic companies, except to say that they rely heavily on copyright and patent to maintain their business models (no pun intended for the cosmetic companies).

Honestly, I was expecting that PDF to be a huge download, not 3 1/3 pages of companies I pretty much fully expected to see. If that's a mostly comprehensive list, I'm baffled as to why this sees so much support in Congress. The dollars must really be flowing from the usual suspects mentioned above.

That's why they have such undue pull. If you look at the American economy, tech companies are WAY bigger than media companies. Intel alone could practically buy and sell Hollywood. However they don't spend a whole lot on bribes. They give money, of course, all companies do, but not on the level media companies do. The media companies give tons and have lots of lobbyists. They are real big on trying to buy the laws they want.

Don't let laziness prevent you from doing the right thing. In the long run, most of the anti-SOPA registrars offer even cheaper services, so it makes sense even financially, if your ethical sense is underdeveloped.

I agree. I switched away from GoDaddy a few years ago, back when they started working with Microsoft to artificially inflate IIS's market share. I moved all of my domains to 1 if I still had any domains on GoDaddy, I would be in the process of switching away right now.

I am not interested in doing business with a company sufficiently clueless about the Internet that they would ever have supported that bill.

If they are that unclear on what the Internet is or why it matters, they can go be clueless without me.

I think we've reached the point where it's time to remember that the purpose of copyright is not to ensure absolute and perfect control, it's to give good enough control that people can figure out a way to make money doing creative work. You know what? People are making money doing creative work. We're done. The "problem" of piracy isn't a problem, any more than the expiration of copyright was a problem.

We've seen the same thing with their treatment of spammer domains. It works
like this:

We notice some spam. We report it to them. They ignore the reports.

We notice some more spam. We report it to them. They tell us it
didn't come from their network/their customers/their affiliate/their anything.

We notice some more spam. We report it to them. They forward the
reports to the spammers, who either list-wash us or send us more spam
or send us nasty notes, sometimes with threats.

We notice some more spam. We report it more widely, and other people
start taking notice. Eventually a number of people concur that yes, it's
spam, and yes, it's GoDaddy's responsibility, and yes, they ought to do
something.

When the chorus gets loud enough, GoDaddy finally does something --
like forcing the spammers to move their domains elsewhere. They
announce this as a major blow against spam thanks to their own hard
work and diligence. They trumpet their anti-abuse policies, pat themselves
on the back, ignore the people who actually did the research, forget all about
how long the abuse went on, and claim the whole thing as yet another win for
themselves.

Process repeats.

So there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this is just the
latest variation of that scam. GoDaddy is only allegedly changing its mind
because of the money involved. It's not on principle, because they have none.
I guarantee you that -- behind the scenes -- they're still doing everything they
can to support this bill.

So, please, everyone: don't be naive and stupid enough to fall for this scam.
Remember: if GoDaddy was REALLY against this bill, they could have said
so yesterday. Or last week. They didn't.

...aren't going to stop pulling this bullshit if they backpedal every time a threat is made. BoA, Netflix, and now GoDaddy seem to be playing these types of games pretty regularly. I've been looking for a decent replacement registrar since seeing the original article this morning and I think that, despite their backpedaling, I'm going to pull my account from them anyway. You know, there's a saying that "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"...these assholes seem to want us to "forgive" them every time they threaten to take our rights away. It's abundantly clear that they aren't interested in preserving Freedom, so fuck them.
Flame on...

"Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation - but we can clearly do better," Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

- Sucking up to the wealthy IP industry?
Check!
- sticking your tongue up two asses at the sam

There been some shrinking of the "Judiciary Committee’s list of SOPA supporters", perhaps due to cold water? Compare this list [digitaltrends.com] (439 entries, dec 21) with the 'official' list [house.gov] (142 entries, dec 23).

The PDF list is by far the most interesting thing of this article and you'd expect it to be all media/software companies (since it's online piracy that the bill is concerned with). Surprisingly, there's a fair number of non-media/sofware companies who don't seem to have anything to do with online piracy at all - here's some:

Not to mention a slew of slimebag lawyers who might stand to profit from any future legal action taken as a result of SOPA. About a third of the list includes conpanies that don't produce anything online to pirate and therefore, should never have been on the list on the first place (their presence is simply lobbying and not actually justified). I wonder how many boycotts we're going to see other than the frankly awful Go Daddy (who were terrible even before supposedly briefly supporting SOPA).

Being based in the UK, I wonder if a UK version of SOPA would result in a list of companies being released that supported the act - I don't know if companies in the UK publicly admit their support for legislation (or at least admitted in a way that a Freedom of Information Act request could reveal).

The companies like L'Oreal and Pfizer support SOPA because they want to be able to take down sites advertising counterfeit versions of their product.Some of the others aren't as readily obvious but I'm sure silver has crossed palms at IBEW.

No, it isn't. Fighting online piracy is a nice-to-have, not a mission-critical.

The ability to transmit information quickly and reliably around the world -- that is of utmost importance. Promoting the progress of science and the useful arts is of utmost importance. Protecting this one particular, possibly outmoded, approach to funding science and the arts is something that we should do if there is a cost effective way to make it happen.

We have not found a cost effective way to do so. The past 15 years of copyright law have cost us far more than they have paid, even in the short run, and their long-run impact in denying or delaying new forms of art, let alone new means of information distribution, is impossible to measure. It is time for us to stop defending and losing ground. This little industry that represents less than 5% of the U.S. GDP is taking far too much away from the other 95% that is absolutely dependent on information distribution. It is time to roll back these hasty and flawed laws that hinder information distribution to protect one small sector of our economy. We need to find ways to enable creators to profit that do not damage the entire rest of the economy. We need to challenge the unsubstantiated belief that this one archaic mode of funding is "of utmost importance."

Adelman couldn’t commit to changing its position on the record in Congress when asked about that, but said “I’ll take that back to our legislative guys, but I agree that’s an important step.” But when pressed, he said “We’re going to step back and let others take leadership roles.” He felt that the public statement removing their support would be sufficient for now, though further steps would be considered.

It's clear that they just want to hide in the shadow instead of taking "leadership" role in supporting SOPA now. Surprise!

It's not just corporations supporting SOPA - it's also a number of unions and union-like organizations. Some of them are less surprising (AFTRA and other actors' and musicians' groups), but I wouldn't have expected the IBEW to be one of the bad guys.

In one sense, Sony is easier to boycott than GoDaddy. Those of us who had domains with GoDaddy actually had to take action to move them. But with Sony, all it takes is not buying anything else with their logo on it.

The downside is that unlike with GoDaddy, the company won't notice it the same way unless we actively alert them, so in that sense, yes, it's harder.

It's actually harder to boycott Sony because at first you can only avoid products wearing any Sony brands. But it's a lot harder to boycott anything which includes components related to Sony (batteries, circuitry,...).

To be honest I couldn't care less what's in their hearts, as long as their actions mirror what they say. They're a faceless corporation, not my grandmother; if the CEO secretly wants to murder kittens, well that's none of my concern, and neither is their secret feelings towards SOPA; as long as they don't screw the pooch by creating corporate policy for it, I say let them be.